


Plum Pudding Car Crash

by blueberrysebby



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who RPF
Genre: Aliens, Anorexia, Autism, Autistic People are part Time Lord, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Dysphoria, Christopher Eccleston!Nine, Crying, Death, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Healthy Friendships that is, Healthy Relationships, Heavy Angst, Heavy topics, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Skating, Medusa Cascade (Doctor Who), Neptune, New Companions (Doctor Who), Ninth Doctor Doesn't Regenerate, OR IS IT, Outer Space, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Ninth Doctor, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Shared Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, The Sisters of the Infinite Schism, Time Lord DNA, Woman Wept (Doctor Who), a LOT of healing here, a LOT of hugging and hand-holding, a lot of it too, discussion of eating disorders, except Parting of the Ways, obviously, s1 canon compliant, this isn't RPF but Nine is a lot like Chris here, what else do you expect it's Nine after all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrysebby/pseuds/blueberrysebby
Summary: At rock bottom of his life, a mysterious blue box materialises right in front of Colin Alderdale's eyes in the forest. The Doctor with the endearing Northern accent and the sad blue eyes saves him from himself and takes him on adventures in space and time - and it turns out rather soon that they have more in common than the Doctor ever thought was possible, and that maybe, Colin wasn't the only one who needed saving.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Original Character(s), Ninth Doctor/Original Male Character(s), Ninth Doctor/Original Trans Male Character
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. Found

**Author's Note:**

> The central themes of this story are admittedly quite heavy. Suicide, self-harm, anorexia, body dysmorphia as well as dysphoria, grief, depression, PTSD - they are all indispensable to the plot and play a key role. It is important to note, however, that all of the characters affected are on a healing journey. No self-hatred or self-harm is embellished or glorified, or seen as an acceptable means of dealing with one's problems, and a central theme throughout the story is the characters slowly but surely unlearning their self-destructive behaviours as they learn instead to communicate and build healthy, reassuring friendships and relationships. None of the characters that actually feature as agents in the story die. 
> 
> \- 
> 
> This story is, more or less obviously, a rather personal thing and also a reflection of my own - alas much less adventurous - journey. I started writing it in March 2020, just after discovering Doctor Who and absolutely falling in love with Christopher Eccleston's portrayal of the Ninth Doctor. Meanwhile, I've seen all of New Who, but Chris still remains my unchallenged favourite. This fic is far from finished and still very much a work in progress. Changes to the chapters already posted are not planned but there is a tiny possibility of them happening. Should this become the case, I apologise in advance. 
> 
> -
> 
> There is a link to a playlist I made for this fic on YouTube right at the end of chapter 1. The songs in the playlist have partly inspired me while writing and are partly featured in the actual story. I can only recommend listening to it while reading to get the specific ~vibe~.
> 
> \- 
> 
> Last but not least, like for most writers on here, feedback is the highest reward for my writing. More than once, a comment has made not only my day but probably my whole week, and I'd love to read what you think. I hope you enjoy this journey :)

Colin Alderdale was squeezed into the corner of his bed, only his atoms keeping him from merging with the wall, in complete shutdown, while outside of his room, his mother was shouting and banging against the door, which he had barred with his desk chair jammed under the handle. How long the whole scene lasted, he couldn’t have said. He didn’t even remember what his mum had originally accused him of doing when she finally gave up trying to get into his head and into his room. He just kept staring into nothing; it had gotten dark, it was an early March night, and the only thought on Colin’s mind now was that his mother would hopefully go to sleep as soon as possible or at least fall asleep on the couch. After half a bottle of wine per evening that usually happened, and with the television running she was so fast asleep even a bomb dropping beside her would barely wake her up.

Colin had tears streaming down his face but didn’t even notice them anymore. His head was pounding, his eyes burning, but his whole mind was fixed on one thing. All the past months, he had tried to push it away, bury it underneath other thoughts, but it kept digging itself up almost ceaselessly now. He had no one left here who understood him. All he had ever clung to in the past was gone, had been gone for several months now during which he had given his all to just stay afloat, but not even that was being acknowledged. They all said they were worried, but they didn’t understand, they couldn’t even come close if they tried. Just like he was sorry, but not sorry enough.

He hated everything in here; it was packed with stuff and messy and people were too loud and too fast and too slow at the same time; it all kept him from dissolving into a mere existence, something he knew wasn’t possible anyway, but there were places he’d gotten at least close to it. He wanted to slip into a cave forever, a ghostly little olm in the sheer murk, dive and sink into a deep-sea trench or launch himself into space. He wanted to become a ghost. He wanted to become an orb of nothingness, utter indifference, matter-less. But none of that was possible; the world kept him within its confines and reminded him with every single breath that the one he missed was not a part of it anymore. And he wanted to follow. He finally wanted to join him in being…nothing. For a time that no one counted, he fell into a dark, empty brooding devoid of thought.

Out of his nightstand, he grasped a thick, black knife, forged from one piece and so sharp it would cut a one-inch rope in one go. He also took a torch. He wasn’t sure why he took the knife when in the breast pocket of his jacket he had an unopened packet of razor blades. Maybe it was because he didn’t know them, had never handled them before. He also took his iPod, which felt weird – was that a thing people did?! -, and a framed photograph. It wasn’t fair, he knew that. To his loved ones. But fairness was just another construct that didn’t stick to the bare, skeletal reality of depression and grief. He knew that now.

He stood up, went to the bathroom, which felt odd as well, and switched off the lights in his room with a _maybe_ , which he knew was just a mask before himself.

He slid silently through the corridor to the door, looked into the living room, only lit by the rapidly changing colours of the television, at his mother, sunk together and asleep on the sofa, bag of crisps in her lap, an image both revolting and pitiful. He had seen it like this hundreds of times, it was no different right now. Except that it was. It was the last time. But he didn’t whisper anything to her. Perhaps he thought it, he wasn’t quite sure of it himself, before he slowly pressed down the handle of the door, slipped into his shoes, and closed it with a soft _click_. That was it. That was all.

He knew the forest like the back of his hand. He had grown up here. Never thought he’d die here. Never planned for it to happen like it had. He didn’t need the torch. Not yet. There was but a thin sickle of a moon, only occasionally showing through the quickly wandering clouds, and a cold, sharp wind in the more open places. The trees had their roots in the night sky, one blacker than the other. For a while he listened to the wood, but there was too much city noise behind the still wintery whispers of branches, it was too much of this world. So he listened to space sounds instead. That was where he was going. Out there, in particles of dust, free of sorrow. With him. To be stardust, together.

He found his place in the thicket, by the towering root of a fallen beech tree, under a holly bush. He’d been here a couple of times before during the past months; this earth had already tasted his blood; he would be no stranger to the rotting leaves.

He sat on a horizontal holly stem. It was cold. The backs of his hands were cracked and his sleeves hard to shove up. He felt the scabs and scars on his forearms rub and burn as he did.

Arms exposed, each hand on the opposite side’s cuts, wandering, tracing, he leaned back and closed his eyes. His cheeks were iced with tears of grief and stinging air. Still he was burning up underneath, his eyes hurting, and the night felt good on his skin.

A couple more breaths now. Just a few more minutes of materiality. He let his head sink back, and breathed, and wept, and was.

The razorblades were in his pocket.

A razorblade was in his fingers.

A razorblade was on his wrist.

Small. Cold. Keen.

Ready.

There was a sudden rush of air and it was not a wind. It was a draught. And through the space sounds in his earphones Colin heard a strange, growing noise that was unlike anything he’d ever heard before. It was like a siren, but hoarse, a siren with a bad cold. Irritated, Colin opened his eyes – and beheld the strangest thing. Right in front of him – that’s right, directly among the bushes, between the two closest-standing trees – there emerged, in flashes, an odd-looking blue box. It… _materialised_. There was no other word coming to his mind for what was just happening. And then it was all there suddenly, after one last wail of the siren and a burst of blue light – a blue phone box, it seemed, in the middle of the woods.

What.

Colin slowly, very slowly pocketed his razor blade. Then, he sat absolutely still, unsure of what to do, or if to do anything at all. He was far enough removed from everything earthly already not to question what was happening. He had never seen a ghost, but he refused to not believe in them. In the light of all recent events, this wasn’t very incredible. Only surreal. But surreal of that sort seemed like a good surreal.

He barely noticed it, but right now, for the first time in months, Colin felt not tired, not sad, not guilty – he felt _curious_.

He had waited so long – now a ghostly encounter that delayed him a bit more couldn’t quite upset him. Maybe it would even grant him a different kind of passage, take him into the beyond, without so much pain, which he undeniably, yet unchangingly feared. So he sat on his branch and waited.

For a while, nothing happened at all. But Colin had time – all his life, quite literally. And eventually, there was movement behind the whiteish window panes. There was a door, apparently, and it opened. Out stepped a man. Against the bright background, Colin could only see his silhouette – quite tall and rather square and unexpectedly human. Colin barely breathed. The man was no three yards away from him, and yet-

“Is there anybody out there?” the man asked in a distinctly Northern accent.

Colin held his breath entirely.

“Are you out there?” the man called. “Because I don’t know who you are or what, but I’ve been receiving a distress signal and-“

He suddenly produced a tiny blue light and it fell directly onto Colin’s face.

“Oh there you are. Hello there.”

Colin blinked into the light orb. Was this a will-o’-the-wisp, perhaps? Luring him into its strange twilight realm? The man’s silhouette extended its hand towards him; still it might have been no more than an absolute shadow, it had no face, no shades, no depth.

“Don’t be scared. I won’t harm you. I’m here to help you.”

With that, the silhouette dropped to its knees in front of Colin, into a squat, and the light fell over its shoulders and onto the man’s face, for he had one, and it was smiling kindly up at Colin, arm still stretched out.

“I’m not…I’m not scared”, said Colin. The man’s smile got a little brighter; a dot of light swam in either of his eyes.

“I know you’re not”, he replied. “I’m the Doctor.”

“That’s an odd name for a ghost. I’m Colin.”

“Ghost?!” the Doctor asked, amused. “I’m not a ghost.”

He hooked one hand into Colin’s. A shockwave ran through the boy like dark matter, full of knowledge he did not yet understand. Apart from this.

“I know you’re not”, he replied. “But…who are you?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you”, said the Doctor. Colin, still holding his hand, got up and followed him. He trusted him blindly. He had no fear, nor any reason for it.

And together, they entered the blue box.

“Welcome to the TARDIS”, the Doctor turned to Colin with a certain pride in his shiny eyes.

“This is…” Colin didn’t finish his sentence; he was too occupied gazing around the huge hemispheric space that was contained inside the box. After a while, his gaze came to rest on the Doctor, who was at least a head taller than him. “Is this your…realm?”

The Doctor chuckled. “Oh I like that”, he said. “You could say so. But it’s actually an abbreviation.”

“The name? Or the, uh, place?”

“Now that you mention it – both.” The Doctor grinned cheekily. “But I meant the name. Means ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’.”

Colin’s glance had wandered off again, to the large round console in the middle of the circular room, which had levers and buttons and tubes and strange rune-like signs, except that they, too, were circular. There was a perpetual sound in the air that Colin couldn’t quite pinpoint where it came from, it felt like the gentle vibrations of a living, breathing creature, all around them.

“Quite impressive, isn’t it?” the Doctor smiled. “And very generous of you to call it my realm. It’s actually a time machine. And a live one, that is. It channels time and space, so again you were right when you asked if it was an abbreviation, because it’s-“

He didn’t get any further. Colin paused and his hand shot up.

“Yea?”

“You were saying…it’s what?!” His voice was suddenly almost all breath.

“A time machine.” The Doctor’s smile now seemed to reach from one ear to the other. Colin had never seen anyone more beaming with childlike pride in his entire life. Somehow that was what steadied him right now. “It channels the time vortex. Complicated thingy. But”, and he, too, raised a finger, “it can transport us anywhere you want, at any time you want. It’s our abbreviation to the universe. The whole universe is my realm; my lapdog.”

Colin flinched.

“ _Us_?!”

“Sure, _us_ , what do you think I got you in here for?! To show you everything and then toss you out?!” He looked a bit offended.

“Anytime, anywhere?” Colin blinked at the Doctor. “So you’re…a time traveller?”

“Yup”, made the Doctor and nodded. “Time-travelling alien, to be more precise. And the TARDIS is my ship.”

“So you can…go to the past?!”

The Doctor’s smile widened, then froze.

“Ah.” He looked at Colin, or, as it actually felt, _into_ Colin. Then his smile re-emerged, but it seemed sad.

“Now”, he began and took a deep breath, as if getting ready for a long explanation, but Colin was faster.

“There’s a catch, isn’t there? There’s always a catch.”

“…kinda. Yeah. So we can go to any place, at any time, but we can’t change things. Well actually, some of them, yes, but we can’t…we can’t save him. We can’t make people live who are supposed to be dead.” He cast his eyes down. “I’m sorry.”

“How do you know-?” Colin began, but he was too speechless. Sad, yes, but more bemused now than before.

“Telepathy. I can do it when I want to, it’s-“ He broke off and looked back at Colin. “Tell me, Colin: if you could go anywhere, right now, where you’ve always wanted to go?”

“Uhh…” He pondered for a moment. “North Rona, off the Scottish coast in the North Sea, I guess. It’s a-“

“Hold up”, the Doctor interrupted him, hurtling over to the console, spinning a small wheel and pulling a lever and then the siren went off again, the phosphorescent green pistons in the tube above the console started pumping, and there was a little shake of the ground, then everything quieted back down.

“That was easy.” The Doctor stood back from the console and crossed his arms.

“Wait, are we-“ Colin gasped.

“Open the door and see for yourself.” The sly, proud smile was back on the Doctor’s face.

Colin rushed to the door, threw it open – and almost got it thrown right back in his face. There was a strong, beating wind, and he had to cling to the doorknob so the door wouldn’t in some way or another be ripped from his grasp. When he looked ahead, there was – nothing. Only the pure black of night and the harsh crash of waves against rock. A few stars in the sky above, cloudless here, and the thin moon. They really were on the Isle of North Rona, in the middle of the North Sea. Colin had wanted to come here for years. For the first time in months, a warm, happy little smile spread on his face. He turned around to the Doctor, blinking the tears of the biting storm from his eyes.

“Now, you’re easy to impress”, the man chuckled. “Want to have a proper look?”

And before Colin could even answer, the Doctor had clasped his hand and pulled him after himself onto the weather-beaten grassy plain. They ran through the night, Colin almost blindly, but the Doctor seemed sure in his every step, and although he was fast, Colin found it strangely easy to keep up. There was a sudden lightness within him that he had almost forgotten ever existed.

Finally, they came to a rough break, the Doctor blocked Colin’s path with one arm, and the boy found himself at the stark, jagged edge of a cliff that dropped several dozen yards vertically into the depths. Directly below them, the sea was grinding its steady grind against the island’s rocky foot.

“This is beautiful!” the Doctor exclaimed, gleefully, squeezing Colin’s hand that he was still holding. “Good choice. I like you.”

Colin looked up and saw the Doctor smiling at him with a drop of starlight in his eyes, and he smiled back.

“I like you, too.”

“Good. I’ve got to talk to you.”

Colin stopped short.

“Let’s get back to the TARDIS.” And just as quickly as they’d come, the Doctor pulled him away from the cliff and back across the meadow towards the faint glow of his ship. Once they were inside, Colin panted for air while the Doctor closed the door behind them and slumped onto a battered little couch-like construction (that was probably actually some sort of driver’s seat, or two of them merged, but it looked like an odd, high sofa on a probably hydraulic metal stalk), long legs stretched out and spread at a ninety-degree angle.

“Why-“ Colin started as soon as he had his breath back, but the Doctor interrupted him again.

“We can look at the rest in the morning. Now-“

“Morning?!” Colin stared at him. “I can’t just stay here overnight, I’ve got to go home!”

“Come on now – you were going to kill yourself!” the Doctor interjected resolutely, with a sharp tinge of anger in his voice. “You were never going to go back home. I still don’t have any idea how, but I received your distress call and came in to help. I’m not going to just…deliver you back home now. You owe me a few explanations, don’t you think?” He had his elbows propped on his knees, his eyes piercing, his brow creased. All of a sudden, Colin didn’t feel quite so safe.

“If I owe you explanations, what am _I_ supposed to say?!” he retorted, although his voice was wobbly. “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on!” He felt like crying again, and not with happiness, crouched down on the grid floor and hung his head.

He almost fell over backwards when the Doctor touched his hand; there was another shockwave like the one before, only that it didn’t quite pass. It stayed in every cell of his body like a warm, soft buzz.

“Are you feeling this too?” the Doctor asked.

“Uh, yeah, I…I guess I am.” Colin stared blankly up at him. “Is that…normal? Like, is it supposed to happen when you touch people?”

The Doctor slowly shook his head.

“It hasn’t happened like this before, actually. As I said, I’m telepathic, but the other doesn’t usually feel it. I can just pop inside their head and”, he snapped his fingers, “poof – that’s it.” He grinned in a flash, then turned earnest within a split second again.

“It’s like I could feel some of what’s inside your head, if that’s possible”, muttered Colin. “I don’t understand it. But I feel it.”

“So do I”, the Doctor replied, softly, deep in thought. He let go of Colin’s hand, and the buzzing stopped at once. Then he turned to Colin and fixed his intense, pale blue eyes on the boy.

“Did you actually _send_ a distress call?”

“I don’t know how I would have. Or why. I mean, you’re right, I did want to…” Colin shrugged. “Why’re you asking?”

“Usually”, the Doctor began, “the TARDIS warns me, she’s the one receiving distress signals, they’re mauve-“

“Why _mauve_ of all things?!”

“Oh, don’t…” There was a short, pained twitch in the Doctor’s face, but then he continued: “It’s the universally acknowledged intergalactic colour of danger. Sort of like red here on Earth.”

“Have you been on Earth before, Sir?”

“Oh – oh, yes.” Now he smiled an inexplicable, distant-eyed smile. “Just ‘Doctor’ will do, though.”

“Sorry.”

“However – on you, the TARDIS didn’t pick up. My psychic paper – don’t ask, it’s exactly what it sounds like – didn’t, either. It was more like an alert inside my own mind, never been like that before, at least not…” He paused. “It’s like when I open the passage to your mind, I open the one to mine as well. But only when I touch you. That’s not normal. Neither is the fact that you can feel it too. And that you can see inside _my_ mind as well. It’s…not supposed to be like that. It’s dangerous.”

“Why’s it dangerous?”

“Because you’re human.” He stared at Colin. “You _are_ human, aren’t you?”

His face scrunched up as he seemed to drive away a notion or a thought. It got quiet in the TARDIS; there was only the soft murmur that Colin had heard before, and the wind hitting the outside walls, trying in vain to shake the little blue box.

“ _Aren’t you?!_ ” The Doctor’s voice got loud, and there was a tinge of despair in it.

“ _I think so_ ”, Colin replied, voice breaking. “But how should I know for sure?!” And after a pause he added: “Never felt entirely human my whole life, to be honest.”

The Doctor turned his torso towards him and grabbed Colin’s hands with both of his own. But this time he didn’t open the mind passage.

“Why don’t you just…go ahead and read me to find out whatever it is you want to know?” Colin muttered.

“As I said, _it’s dangerous_. Too dangerous, as long as I don’t know for sure that you’re not actually human.” Still that didn’t keep the Doctor from staring deep into Colin’s eyes. “Explain to me why.”

“Why _what_?!”

“Why you’ve never felt entirely human.”

Colin laughed bitterly, averting his eyes, and when he looked back at the Doctor they were brimming with tears.

“It’s just an awful lot of very…human stuff, it’s not important.”

“ _Not important_ ”, the Doctor spat. “Tell me what it is and I’ll tell you if it’s important.”

Colin was intimidated, sad, and curious, and there was no reason not to give in to what the Doctor was asking. So he took a deep breath, gazing down at the floor between his shoes, and began.

“I’ve always felt a bit like a ghost, really. Like barely anyone sees me, and most of those who do hate me. Sometimes I’d rather be entirely invisible. I don’t like being among people, they’re loud and stupid and they scare me. They’re irrational, too, and hypocritical. I don’t understand most of their values or why they keep breaking them if they’re so important to them in the first place. I know it sounds arrogant, but…they all seem so ridiculous sometimes. And I feel…different. Like – older, perhaps, but not in a human sort of way. More like a luminary, a moon or something. My body’s always felt wrong, for one thing because I’m trans, and because I’ve probably been struggling with body dysmorphia all my life too, but it’s also always felt like a constraint, physicality in general; I’ve struggled with that a lot. I’d choose to be a ghost if that was an option. And although I’m no good with people, I tend to always…pick one and stick with them, whether they’re worth it or not, they’re like my connection to the human world, make it bearable. I recently lost that person; he killed himself. Days before…” Colin’s flow of words suddenly broke off and he buried his face in his hands, “…days before I could tell him what he meant to me. After years of failing to do so, because I barely understood.” He pressed his lips together in an effort not to cry in front of the Doctor, but there was already a tear running from the corner of his eye. Meanwhile, the Doctor just sat there, silently, his gaze still fixed on the boy, motionless. Colin collected himself and continued:

“Well, anyway…I’ve never really had friends, either…more like allies, or acquaintances, but barely friends. It’s as if I was just too far…removed, somehow. Too distant in a way I can’t define. I mean, I once left my own birthday party when I was three and told my mum there were too many children there. Guess I’m just not cut out for…domesticity.” He chuckled quietly. “When I was small, everyone thought I was a genius, and so mature for my age. But I actually always just ran away inside my mind because I couldn’t stand the world. I still can’t. Can’t stand it a little more each day. I lost half my youth to being trans, and I won’t get it back, and my dad has anger issues he used to take out on my mum and now she’s taking it out on me, when I’m around too much, and the world is a cage, there’s nowhere left to escape to, no adventures to have, no true darkness or silence, and I crave that so much. But I can’t get it, not even really in my mind, because my imagination is failing me and sometimes there’s intrusive thoughts. All the things I really wish for are practically impossible, and I’m here, undiagnosed autistic and trans and depressed and with some form of PTSD and now he’s gone too and I just don’t see any reason why…”

The last lines of what he’d said had come out faster and faster, the words were bursting out of him, he’d never said it like this before, it was all so much he rarely knew where to even begin, and now he broke off again and doubled up, hugging his own legs, sobbing and shaking.

Slowly, softly, the Doctor laid a hand on his back.

“That’s a lot”, he said. His voice was faint, like an echo from the other end of the universe. “But would he really be worth it, for your story to end now? Think about that. Now look at me.”

Colin turned his head and focused on the Doctor with red, swollen eyes. The Doctor gazed back, his contours blurred through Colin’s tears but his eyes like two bright blue stars, warm stars, and everything around them fell away into the growing dark of space, until they, at last, went out, too. 

When Colin woke up, he found himself on the sofa, tucked under something he soon discovered to be the Doctor’s heavy, battered leather jacket. He felt drowsy and yet astonishingly peaceful; he remembered dreams of faraway moons and colourful galaxies, and sleep was still settled deep in his bones. He could feel a thin ray of sunlight falling on his face, and despite it being early March, it was warm and felt fuzzy, tingly, like the first sunlight of spring is supposed to feel, and he realised that had things gone according to his plans, he’d not have felt the sunlight ever again. An overwhelming, silent gratitude spread throughout his body, and he smiled quietly with a sting in his nose.

He hadn’t been curious to see a day unfold for months, but he was curious about today, and the feeling was as new and as familiar as spring itself. He was far away from home, in a place he’d never been, with a person he immensely liked and wondrously trusted, and there was something about this that made him feel as calmly excited as he had last felt as a small child. Something had changed profoundly, and he wasn’t any more whole than yesterday, but something suddenly made everything more bearable. The Doctor had given him hope.

He stretched a little and yawned the clingy sleep out of his lungs. Turning around and peeking over the dingy yellow sofa’s back rest, Colin saw that the door of the TARDIS stood slightly ajar – thus the sunlight – and through the gap, he could see a forget-me-not-blue morning sky and a far plane of swaying grass. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen. Colin sat up and slid off the couch. He slung the jacket over his shoulders and walked to the door, pushing it open and stepping into the clear, bright light. The wind had lessened since the night before, but apparently it had rained in the early morning; there were sparkling drops on every blade of grass, and the air had that inexplicable, but unmistakeable spring rain scent. Colin breathed in deeply, eyes closed, when he felt a hand lay on his shoulder. He turned and saw the Doctor, his frame astonishingly narrow without his jacket, smiling warmly at him.

“That jacket suits you. Should wear it more often!”

He himself was only in a thin night-blue jumper now.

“Aw, thanks, but aren’t you cold?” replied Colin.

“I’m coping”, the Doctor said. “Time Lords are rather cold by nature, body temperature-wise.”

“Time Lords?”

“Um, yup, that’s…my species. My people.”

“Wait – you’re not the only one who-“

“Yeh, actually I am though”, the Doctor muttered. “I’m the last of them. Last Time Lord in all of the universe. Long story.”

He pressed his lips together and shrugged, trying to keep up the cheery mood, but it didn’t quite work, and his eyes strayed into an unfathomable distance for a moment. Colin turned to face him completely, and considered for a second laying his hand on top of that of the Doctor, but then he just said:

“I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do? You want to tell me what happened?”

“Oh”, made the Doctor, “that’s really kind of you, but I’m afraid…I’ve told the story I can’t even remember how many times, and it’s quite long ago now too… I’d much rather you tell me how your night was. Are you refreshed?”

Colin nodded. “I fell asleep really quickly, didn’t I? Did you by any chance…hypnotise me or something?”

The Doctor made a shameful face. “I should’ve asked. But yeah, I did do something a little like that. You were so upset, and I…I didn’t know what else to do. So I tried to calm your mind. Glad it worked though!” He bounced on his heels, grinning again.

“It definitely did”, Colin couldn’t suppress a laugh. He didn’t quite understand himself, being so okay with all of this, but seeing the Doctor so smiley and excited made it impossible for him to feel any different. Then he had a thought: “Are you still inside my mind somehow?”

“Nope!” said the Doctor. “That’d be sort of creepy, wouldn’t it?!”

“Sort of”, Colin agreed.

“What makes you think I was?”

“Don’t know. Just an idea. I feel so…fine. I feel fine.” Colin pondered what he had said for a moment, gazing up at the Doctor, who was suddenly all serious. “Doctor, what’s wrong?”

But the Doctor didn’t reply. He just took a big step forward and wrapped his arms around Colin tightly, almost lifting him off the ground. Right now, despite his alleged low body temperature, Colin knew he had rarely ever felt anything warmer than the Doctor’s hug. When he let go of him, his hands still on Colin’s shoulders, he exclaimed: “That’s brilliant! Absolutely fantastic!”

He was beaming, indescribably so, sounded a little choked up and had tears in his eyes.

***

A while later, they were sitting together on a boulder by the edge of the cliff, sharing a handful of slightly ancient-looking vegan oat biscuits for breakfast that the Doctor had dug up from the depths of the TARDIS and enjoying the breeze tousling their hair. Colin’s was chestnut blond, thick and unruly, while the Doctor’s was indeed a lot more touslable; greyish, short on the sides but a little longer on top so that it stuck up in feathery tufts. Looking at the Doctor, something made Colin smile. Not taking his eyes from the horizon, the older man asked:

“What is it?”

Colin giggled. “Uh, nothing.”

“What is it?” Now the Doctor turned to him and pouted at him.

“Your hair – it’s just…it’s sticking up in all directions.” Colin tried to shake off the laughter, but the Doctor was already smoothing his head and actually started giggling as well.

“Guess my favourite barber shop closed.”

“ _You_ go to the barber’s?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” The Doctor sounded scandalised.

“Nothing, it’s just…with you being a time-travelling alien and all…can’t you just go back to when it was still open?”

“Nope. Too risky.” The Doctor shoved a last biscuit into his mouth and munched it. Colin gazed out onto the rough sea.

“Doctor?” he ventured eventually. “Have you ever actually _tried_ …bringing someone back to life? Or avoiding their death?”

“Not me, really”, the Doctor relied pensively. “But a companion.” He turned back to face the boy. “Trust me, you don’t want to see that.”

“Guess it would wound continuity too much, huh?”

The Doctor’s eyes widened a little.

“Continuity is a tricky word, but basically, yes. It would change everything.”

Colin nodded. “Probably I wouldn’t even be here.”

The Doctor was silent, but still looking at Colin, for a long time. Then at last he asked:

“Do you remember what you said last night?”

“All of it?!” Colin laughed.

“No”, replied the Doctor, quite seriously. “Towards the end. You said you were undiagnosed autistic and trans and depressed and had some form of PTSD.”

“I think you just… Did you just quote me, literally?”

“Finally, someone uses the word ‘literally’ literally”, the Doctor almost rejoiced, then went back straight to his former seriousness. “And yes, I almost did. I think. Mind isn’t what it used to be, mind you. The centuries are beginning to show, I’m afraid. Anyway-“

“The _what_?!” Colin gasped.

“Never mind-“

“You’re _centuries_ old?!”

“I’m a time traveller. And an alien. You believed that easily enough! Why not the nine hundred years?”

“Nine hundred?!”

“Yup.” And, seeming a little suspicious, he added: “Why?”

“You don’t look it, that’s all.” Colin blinked up at him, as the Doctor was sitting against the sun.

“Oh thanks”, he replied, suddenly all smiley again, in his thick Northern accent. Then he took a deep breath, went back into his frown, and said: “However – I know enough about depression and PTSD and trans-identity…”

Colin was once more taken aback by how woke the Doctor was; despite him being an almost millennium-old time-travelling alien, he seemed to know more about disadvantaged minorities and intersectionality than the average middle-aged white human male that he looked to be ever would.

“…but autism…” The Doctor stared ponderously at the grass between his heavy black boots. For a while, Colin just watched him as he brooded, his eyes galactic distances away from the here and now, or at least the one Colin knew. When he re-emerged, it seemed to be from the other end of the solar system at least.

“I’ve had an idea”, he muttered, gazing at Colin but also through him. “A thought. First had it last night, tried to dismiss it, but…” He shook his head vigorously. “…I can’t. It’s like a constant humming in my head, it’s…”

“Well, what’s so bad about it – the thought I mean?” Colin eyed the Doctor curiously.

“Look, I-“ He seemed to struggle to find the right words, or a start at all. “It’s dangerous. It’d involve me putting you at risk.”

Colin suppressed a snort.

“Doctor, as you said last night – I was about to kill myself. I’m not scared of…of death, or physical pain, really, or whatever. I’m scared of what was, and that I’ll never get beyond what my reality decided it would be. Never getting out of that cage in the future that the past built around me. I wish I could be something…more.”

“You might be”, mumbled the Doctor. “You might be just that. And if that’s your answer…” He fell silent again. Then, all of a sudden, he jumped up like a spring released, made a vague motion towards the TARDIS and said: “Come with me.”

Back in the Doctor’s ship, the Time Lord asked Colin to lie down on the little sofa.

“I’m going to test something now. In the best case, it might not affect you at all. In the worst case…it might kill you.” He looked at the boy getting comfortable on the yellowish upholstery. “You really alright with this? We could just…not do it.”

“You said you had an idea you were unable to get rid of, Doctor. I want to know what that idea is. But I presume we need to do this first for you to tell me. So just…get on with it.” And a little more quietly, a little less confidently, he added: “I don’t know why, but I trust you. You saved my life, and you won’t kill me now.” He smiled and muttered, now so quietly he thought the Doctor might not hear it at all: “And even if you do, it means I’d die on one of the greatest adventures of my life. And if that isn’t worth it, I don’t know what would be.”

The Doctor did hear him. He smiled, too, kneeled down beside the couch, mumbled “hold on, alright”, and laid his hands on Colin’s temples. Split seconds later, a beam of golden light shot from either of his pale blue eyes, encapsulating them both under a dome of bright, raw energy as the beams connected between the Doctor’s eyes and Colin’s. The boy gasped, dug his fingers into the sleeves of the Time Lord’s jacket, staring without blinking, bereft of all speech. There were no words to describe what he saw, felt, lived in this very moment. Because it was everything and nothing; all that was, all that is and all that ever might be, through all who were and had been and once would be, in the whole universe. He was looking directly into the time vortex, channelled from the heart of the TARDIS by the Doctor. In this moment, he was time itself.

And when he had been enough, he scooped the Doctor’s hands gently from the sides of his face, whispering:

“You lied to me, Doctor.”

With that, he for his part cupped the Time Lord’s face, wiped a tear off the man’s cheek, and closed his eyes. All the vortex’s energy was transferred into him, leaving the Doctor empty and crying on the floor while Colin stood up, all his movements smooth and one, stepped past the Doctor and towards the TARDIS console, which was opened up in one place. Only when he stood directly in front of there, he reopened his eyes and released the vortex energy to return it into the TARDIS’ core. The console closed, holding the vortex inside, and Colin propped his hand on its top, out of breath and shaking. Eventually, once he had retreated from the edge of unconsciousness, he walked carefully back to where the Doctor was still kneeling, bent forward with his face buried in the worn cushioning of the sofa. Only when Colin sat down and laid a hand on the Doctor’s, he looked up. His eyes were red and he was still crying, and in an inexplicable way, he looked as if he had just become both a decade older and younger, according to human standards. He looked worn but was also glowing, his eyes were bloodshot but shone like supernovae, and through all the regret and sadness in them he smiled brightly, wonderfully, as though the burden of Atlas was no longer his to bear.

The Doctor had lied to Colin.

He, too, might have died during what they just did.

He would have, had Colin not incurred the time vortex.

But they both knew things now, things they would never have learned, had they not risked this.

The Doctor might be the last real Time Lord, but he was not the last with Time Lord DNA.

Colin had some of it. All autistic people did. It was what caused autism in the first place. What caused all those feelings of difference, not belonging, and created alternative ways of perception.

“You could have died”, Colin muttered.

“But I was right”, the Doctor replied triumphantly, though weakly. “My idea…was right.”

“But how?”

“You saw!” was all the Doctor said, and he was right again. “There have been stories on Earth about aliens from outer space ever since the inception of humankind.” His face scrunched up in a sneaky smile.

“But how did you never know, if you can…feel them? Your people?”

“I just knew all of them had died in the Time War. And they have. I never even considered…” He shrugged. “I may be a time travelling alien, but that doesn’t exempt me from being stupid.” Chuckling lowly, he picked himself up and slouched on the sofa.

“You’re the least stupid person I’ve ever known”, said Colin, genuinely. “I just think you were too afraid to hope.” He grasped the Doctor’s hand and squeezed it. “There’s more than just one way that you’re like me.”

Now that they had both looked into time itself, as well as deeply into one another, they knew almost equally much about the respective other as the latter knew about himself. They had seen the other’s past; Colin had seen some of what the Doctor had gone through in the Time War, and his time with Rose Tyler, his loss of her, how she had almost died for him and he had, after that, left her, broken all of their three hearts, but only to keep her safe. He had seen all of the Doctor’s adventures, before, with and after Rose, all the times he had already barely escaped death, all the friends he had made and lost again, and he understood the Time Lord’s harrowing loneliness in this vast universe that he seemed to be the sole protector of.

And the Doctor had seen all of Colin’s twenty-two years of life, every second of them, the entire pain of his first eighteen years having to pretend that he was something, someone he wasn’t; all the hatred for his body and the times it had almost killed him; his accidental origin as the single bond between two parents who should never have crossed each other’s paths in the first place; who in their own ways cared about their son but rarely ever understood him; his friendless childhood and youth, his benumbing fears and soaring dreams, and how much, actually, he did see the world not like a human being but like a Time Lord; how he could not help but always see the bigger scheme of things, and how sometimes, he felt the Earth falling through space but couldn’t escape it. At least not until now.

“Time Lord DNA”, said the Doctor, “is a funny old thing. It’s a bit like a, a recessive gene, it can remain hidden for generations, centuries, with no…let’s call it symptoms, and then it can suddenly emerge and create someone like you.” The Doctor rubbed his creased brow. “Only problem is, these people are – they’re clueless. They’re discriminated against by society, have been for ages, have been forced to hide. And despite all of that – I mean look at you!” He sounded high-pitched and quietly desperate. “You’re so incredibly strong! Stronger than me, in some aspects! You held the time vortex and it didn’t even harm you! Last time I did that, I almost would’ve had to regenerate.” That, too, was something Colin had seen in the Doctor’s past – his previous incarnations, although most of the memories of his former exteriors were, for some reason, blurry, like inklings of past lives. “After Rose…”, the Doctor paused grievously, “…I swore to myself I’d never take a human companion along anymore. It was too dangerous, they’re always at risk of being hurt, of dying, and I couldn’t account for that, I couldn’t bear that, the guilt of losing another one… But you’re…you’re not human. I mean you’re human, of course, but…different. Stronger. Part Time Lord.”

He mumbled this through his fingers, his chin in his hands, elbows propped heavily on his knees, and then peered up at Colin.

“If you’d like…you could be my new companion. Full-time. With a TARDIS key and all.”

There was a hope in his eyes of a man that had expected to spend the rest of his days alone – imploring, yet fearful and guarded, almost expecting refusal. Just looking at him made Colin want to cry. Because he knew his answer, but there was something so fragile in this moment.

Because this alien man with his two hearts deserved to receive all the love they could hold.

And because they were so alike.

“What have I got to lose?!” Colin teased, but then turned serious and said “I’d love that” and fell into the Doctor’s arms.

At first, they both didn’t notice the singing. Or if they heeded it at all, they just thought the wind was picking up again. The Doctor and Colin were back inside one another’s heads, unaware that the suddenly emerging visions of dark horizons and faraway constellations weren’t from the Doctor’s, and those of a glimmering, dark turquoise underwater abyss weren’t from Colin’s mind. As the sing-song got louder, turning into an otherworldly sort of chant, beautiful yet terrifying, they were already lost, and their visions were slowly absorbed by ultraviolet light, before the chant turned into a scream as though from the void itself, and everything went black.

\---

[Playlist Plum Pudding Car Crash](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeI609FHhFTOi9x8zuixJMUEKYC41Hurr)


	2. Woman Wept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Colin wake up on strange planet which, however, the Doctor is no stranger to, taken there by one of the most mysterious, elusive and dangerous creatures in the known universe and far beyond.

The first thing Colin felt was _cold_. It was so utterly, benumbingly cold he could barely move. His bones hurt. When he forced himself to turn his head, the Doctor was sitting next to him, looking dazed. They were still inside the TARDIS.

“What happened?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s cold.”

The Doctor looked at his young companion.

“What did you just say?”

“I said it’s cold! Don’t you feel it?”

“Not as much. As I said – low body temperature. But that doesn’t-“ He broke off and came to his feet. “I know where we are.”

“Wait, you mean-“

“We’re not on Rona anymore. We’re lightyears away. We’re on Woman Wept.”

“Woman-?”

“I’ll explain it to you later, given that we survive this. On your feet now.”

He offered Colin a hand, pulled him up and then walked with him to the door.

“Better grab your jacket”, he advised, and Colin ran to fetch it and returned to the Doctor. “Now take my hand, and don’t, under any circumstances, let go. Come on.”

With that, he opened the blue box’s door. The icy air hit them with the force of a solid iron wall. As they stepped outside, the Doctor felt Colin’s grasp on his hand tighten as the boy’s face went blank. They were under a night sky lit up by unknown stars, veiled behind a multicoloured nebula that enveloped the entire planet.

“The Medusa Cascade”, whispered the Doctor, smiling vaguely sideways at Colin. “A beautiful, dangerous secret pocket in the universe.”

Colin wanted to ask why it was dangerous, but the Doctor’s mouth was pressed shut and he felt that this wasn’t the time. He was probably about to find out anyway.

The TARDIS had landed on a beach – if a beach it could be called. Behind them there rose a steep rock face, a cliff, its uniform blackness sharp against the illuminated sky beyond, rising several dozen feet above their heads. To the sides, the beach stretched beyond sight, black sand until distance and darkness intercepted vision. Before them was the sea. It was utterly still. Waves, thirty feet high, motionless – frozen. A silent surf. As though everything had just suddenly stopped.

“Is it-“

“Ice, yes”, confirmed the Doctor. “Massive, too, probably. Now look out…and if you hear anything that’s not me or the wind, cover your ears, hum, sing, do anything, but _don’t listen_. Ever. Come on.”

Hand in hand they quietly walked down to where the water met the sand – and it was true, it was all ice, and no movement underneath, which suggested it was indeed massive. The Doctor set foot on it without hesitation, and Colin followed, as he was wont to do by now. For a while, the Doctor seemed hurried, nervous, permanently on the lookout. But after they had been on the ice for a while, walked among the huge frozen waves that reflected the eerie lights in the sky, he slowed and calmed down, softening his grasp on Colin’s hand and finally standing still, looking at his companion.

“Woman Wept”, he began, “has its name from the shape of its single landmass. From up there it looks like a lamenting person, or like one of those statues on graveyards, so they named it Woman Wept. Probably because of the alliteration. I’ve been here before, with Rose. Already back then something about this place felt off, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Now I know.”

They stood directly under the crest of a wave, frozen in its moment of breaking, waterdrops turned into icicles, thin and glistening against the strange, bright-yet-dark sky, the light from above falling through it.

“This planet is wrong.”

“How do you mean, it’s wrong? How can a planet be wrong?”

“This whole place – it’s not where it’s supposed to be. It’s an un-place, of sorts. Someone or something removed this planet from its reality and placed it here – in the Medusa Cascade. It’s dangerous, as I said, because it’s like a pocket in reality. A place to hide things, big things, entire places and times, hide them from the rest of the universes. This planet sits in the middle of a wrong, altered reality. It shouldn’t be here.”

“What are the consequences?” asked Colin, following the Doctor’s slowly wandering eyes to the shimmering mass of water overhead.

“Everything”, said the Doctor. “All that you see right now: the nebula skies. The sea, frozen to the deepest trenches. The darkness. And them.”

“Them?”

“The creatures who brought us here.”

Colin stared at the Doctor.

“Even I doubted their existence until now. And in a way, they really don’t exist. At least not in actual places. They do here, however.”

“Who are they?” asked Colin, his voice fading at once into the cold silence.

“They’re wrong, like this place. They can only exist in places like this. Which means they’re able to travel through the Void – the absolute nothingness between universes, dimensions. And they can take stuff with them. They took us with them. Inside the TARDIS. Nothing else has ever been capable of that before. Not like that.”

“That’s scary”, whispered Colin and inadvertently squeezed the Doctor’s hand a little tighter. “What are they, then?”

“It is”, the Time Lord agreed. “And they’re…souls, lost outside of time and space. I don’t know how many they are, or how they got there. I don’t think anyone does. They’re called the Choris Onoma. Which is kind of…”

“…ironic? Because it means ‘without name’?”

“You know ancient Greek then.” The Doctor seemed pleased, but not surprised.

“Three years of it in school. Hadn’t thought I’d still remember anything, but apparently…” He shrugged with a little smirk.

“They’re maybe the closest thing to actual ghosts. They come from the Void, and usually can’t even enter reality through the Rift – a crack in space and time, if you will. Usually. Because sometimes, something rips that Rift wide open, creates a sort of portal between all places and times, and sometimes reaches even the un-places, and the Void.”

“But what on Earth could be strong enough to do that?!”

“Nothing”, replied the Doctor and looked at Colin with an unreadable, stern expression. “Nothing on Earth. But something inside a TARDIS.” He looked regretful, almost pained. “I think we summoned them. By releasing the time vortex, even if only for a split second, we released a massive amount of power. For the tiny amount of time it was between you and me, and then between you and her, it was practically out in the open. That’s enough to cause a rupture in the Rift. One of its weakest points on Earth is in Cardiff – not that far from our little island. It’s enough if just one of them was near the rupture on their side – if we can talk about any such thing as nearness in the complete nothingness of the Void. However, it was there, and it crossed over and took us back with it. For aeons these creatures have broken through the Rift on ever-so-rare occasions and become the base material of all those myths and legends – will-o’-the-wisps, selkies, you name it. People vanish…never to be seen again. And thus, stories are born; sad stories. Stories of the in-between, of departure and death. They are true, and yet they aren’t. The Choris Onoma are deeply lonely, terrifying existences, you know…” The Doctor’s eyes transfigured, and he gazed off into nowhere while he continued softly: “I don’t believe they want to hurt anyone. They’re just terribly alone. Time Lord lore has it that there was only one of them in the beginning, and no one knows how it came into being. If it was some unlucky being from Dickens-knows-where that somehow, sometime left the time-space-continuum by the single most unlikely sequence of events, or if it existed before time and space even came to be and was somehow left out, older than the universe and now pushed into the eternal in-between…or if there is a completely different story behind it yet. No one knows. But the lore also says that there are more now, that they grew in number, and still nobody knows if they’re all the same being or truly different entities; if it took other souls out with it, or if all of them are its own soul multiplied through the life energy of others, taken only to minimise its loneliness, unknowingly taking lives because the sheer concept of life as we know it is strange and irrelevant to it.”

“Do they… _belong_ in the Void, then? What do they, or what does _it_ look like?”

“Nothing belongs in the Void – that’s why it’s the Void. But apparently something was unlucky enough to be able to survive in it. And they look like…” the Doctor looked around, out from under the wave’s crest, and then slowly, with his eyes growing wider, he added in a whisper, “…this.”

All of a sudden they were surrounded by sweeping, ghostly, elliptical lights, gliding through the air like seals through water, of a pale, yet blinding blue, encapsulating, each and every one of them, what looked like a black orb at their very centre. Seemingly out of nothing, they were gathering around Colin and the Doctor, first only two or three, but soon several dozen, circling around them, drawing ever closer. The two companions seemed frozen into the icy world. Speechless, they stood, eyes and mouths open wide in utter wonder, still holding hands. It was the Doctor who thawed first, withdrawing his hand from Colin’s, thus causing the boy to finally avert his eyes from the Choris Onoma.

“Colin”, he whispered, “remember what I said – whatever you do, whatever _they_ do, do _not_ let them sing to you. That is how they…take people.”

“Is that how we got here in the first place?”

The Doctor nodded.

“Yeah. The singing on the island – that was them. I noticed it too late. Now I know better.”

“What do we do?”

“As long as they don’t sing – nothing.”

And so they stood, with the Choris Onoma drawing ever closer circles around them, in the absolute silence of the place that should not be, still, waiting though unsure what for, and eventually taken with the stunning beauty of the scene.

They stared, and the Choris Onoma seemed to stare back from the eye-like orb inside them.

“Doctor, the black spheres, are they…”

“…Voidstuff, probably. They hold it bound inside themselves – small black holes, contained by whatever it is that surrounds them. They’re probably what ties them to the Void. The singing…I presume that’s when they open them, and pull you in.”

The Choris Onoma were now so close they could almost feel them. Colin’s hands were hanging at his sides, forgotten like his breathing, until he felt something touch his left palm. As he looked down, he was too mystified to move, or to even be scared.

One of the beings had practically nestled into his hand, and oddly it was material, it had a surface although it looked gaseous, and this surface was soft and smooth, albeit cool; softer and smoother in fact than anything Colin had ever felt before. And for some reason, for a moment, it felt incredibly, inexplicably _familiar_. And then he could hear it – singing. But it was not like before. Did not entrance him or try to abduct him. It was nothing like that. He only stood there and felt the tears rise into his eyes and could do nothing against it. He heard the true song of the Choris Onoma; the true song of the Void.

No human language could ever verbalise, no human voice could ever enunciate such sadness, such heaviness, such bare truth. Probably, not any voice ever could.

“Doctor”, whispered Colin, “do you hear it?”

No one replied. It took enormous concentration for Colin to realise that he had not spoken aloud at all, merely thought.

“Doctor”, he tried again, hearing his physical voice less than his thoughts through the singing of the Choris Onoma. “Doctor, do you hear it?”

The Doctor turned around slowly, so slowly, Colin thought he might never see his eyes again but then he was facing him through a veil of tears and he couldn’t stand it anymore, the Chorus of the Void, “Hear what?” he heard the Doctor ask from so, so far away, it was tearing him apart, the nothingness, his mind, “Doctor they are crying”, was all he could manage, his eyes were failing, everywhere yet nowhere was the universe, “don’t touch me”, but why, please touch me, hold my matter, keep, “they need our help”, me, hold me, “Doctor”, nothing more.

All faded.

He fell and the Doctor reached for him and there was a jarring familiarity, incoherent, senseless, implausible but there, in the touch that linked the Doctor with the Choris Onoma through Colin, as the moment was suspended in mid-air, and the Choris Onoma melted into one, all around them, and brought forth from their joint nothingness an orb, an orb that was and was not, that was adamant dark and blinding bright, and foreboding, a vessel of doom.

And as it locked into place at the ends of the Doctor and Colin’s respective single outstretched arms, felt the living warmth of their palms, it folded into itself, opening up an intricate shell, to reveal just another cavity of darkest nothing inside it.

A Void Ship.

Unheard-of gratitude surged through Colin and the Doctor.

The singing ceased.

Then, unconsciousness.

***

Colin found himself waking in the Doctor’s lap.

The Doctor was in his mind. And he was in the Doctor’s.

There would have been too much to say had they not been. Too much they both did not understand. Neither of them knew what had just happened. But through the Doctor’s mind, Colin was aware that whatever they were, whatever it was, the Choris Onoma seemed to have needed the Doctor and Colin to open the Void Ship, and that they probably used it to return into the Void. They were gone. But there was one thing-

“Doctor?”

Colin shuffled himself a bit further up the Doctor’s lap and looked into his deep, light blue eyes, breaking the mental link. That was new – it hadn’t been possible for him before he had looked into the heart of the TARDIS. The Doctor however didn’t even seem to notice, he just gazed back at Colin, somewhat out of it.

“I can barely remember, but…I thought not to touch you. And when you did anyway, there was this feeling…”

“So you felt it too.” The Doctor sighed softly. Colin nodded.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know…yet”, replied the Doctor, lost in a universe of thoughts of his own now.

“What do you mean, ‘yet’?”

“In the life of a time traveller, Colin, some things happen that only make sense much, much later…or earlier. You’ll understand it when the time comes. Quite literally.”

He smiled leniently down at the boy, and Colin smiled back, and thought to himself that maybe he understood more already than the Doctor would like to believe.

“Do you think that’s why they transported us here in the first place?”

“It isn’t unlikely”, replied the Doctor. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, you seem to be alright, astonishingly, but quite as expected, and my legs are getting pretty cold down there.” He vaguely motioned with his head and made a wonky face.

“I thought you were so cold anyway”, Colin teased him, but pushed himself off the icy ground and sat up in a squat.

“Not _that_ cold!” the Doctor protested. “I don’t have duck feet, with the heat exchange and all!”

He squatted, too, sitting on the heels of his heavy black boots.

“While we’re on the topic – don’t your feet ever hurt in these? I mean, do you ever take them off?”

“We’re in the farthest pocket of the universe, on a logically impossible planet, just escaped termination through one of the most mysterious, dangerous beings of said universe and beyond, and he worries about my feet”, the Doctor shook his head in mock huff, looking ponderously down at his feet, then up at Colin. “You know what?!” he admitted then. “I appreciate the thought. But you will excuse me for not taking them off at the moment, won’t you?! Now – what next?”

“Didn’t you just say we only just escaped death?!” Now it was Colin’s turn to shake his head.

“Exactly! The day’s still young!” The Doctor grinned cheekily. “Let’s go not die again!”

“How do you even tell?” Colin asked, and although he was tempted to let himself be infected by the Doctor’s smile and enthusiasm, he forced himself to remain serious.

“Tell what?” the Doctor asked, still grinning but now mildly confused.

“That the day’s still young. There isn’t even a day here – is there?”

“Not like this, no”, the Doctor’s smile began to drop, “not here. It’s probably just…a saying I’ve kept…even though it’s rarely the same sun going down on me that I saw rise…” He swallowed thickly, then pulled his face back into a smile.

“When you say the sun that you saw rise, does that mean you always see the sunrise? As in, you never sleep?”

“Not much. I mean I can, I could, but…” The Doctor shrugged, blinked at Colin and made to stand up. But the boy caught his hand.

“Doctor”, he said, and it wasn’t a question, it was a demand for the man to stay. The Doctor, already half-turned, spun back, surprised. Settled back down on his haunches. “Doctor, you may be ages old and wiser than any other creature, but apparently you keep forgetting that I’ve been in your head like you’ve been in mine. They aren’t so different in the first place, but I’ve seen it, Doctor.”

“Not everything you haven’t”, he very nearly snapped back. “There are doors. Doors that can be closed.” Now his smile was hard and arrogant but his eyes were dead empty and helpless.

“Doors, like smiles, you mean?” Colin retorted. “Because maybe I can see through them, Doctor. People have called me clumsy, unemotional, even cold, and you may know that sentiment. Just like you, I can’t handle it when people throw their emotions at me. But I pick up on things others won’t even notice. And you know that, too. That’s how we are. You can drop the façade with me, Doctor. It may be the first time in what, years, decades, centuries, I don’t care, but if I’m travelling with you, I want you to be honest with me, in every aspect. I need you to. Otherwise…I don’t want your TARDIS key.”

That seemed to hit the Doctor like a blow in the face. His face was suddenly relieved of its forced, bitter smile and went soft, surprised, eyes and mouth round and open, almost like a little boy. And that was when Colin in turn smiled, took the Doctor’s large hand with his second one and murmured:

“Not knowing something, Doctor, isn’t a weakness, even after almost a millennium of being alive. Not understanding something isn’t. Fearing something isn’t… And letting someone in isn’t, either. I know that and so do you.” He got to his feet and pulled the Doctor up, too. “Let’s just walk for a bit, mh?”

“I wonder”, Colin began when, after a while of silent walking across the sheer endless ice sea, they came to stand under a wave that almost formed something like a little cave, frozen in the moment of breaking on three sides, “I wonder if they were ever intending to harm us. Because it didn’t feel like it, did it?”

“There’s many things in this universe that don’t _want_ to harm or kill you but still do – and even more of them beyond. They have different ways of life, different kinds of consciousness. Maybe you could liken it to, I don’t know, a human accidentally stepping on an ant – but it’s not even like that, it’s-“

He broke off and started fiddling and fumbling with the broad lapel of his jacket, staring at the bubble-dotted ground. Colin meanwhile had his eyes on the sky and suddenly nudged the Doctor out of his thoughts.

“Look!”

Overhead, a moon-like celestial body was just emerging from behind a large, dark gas giant, reflecting brightly the light of some oddly invisible sun, and it fell through the wave’s crest like moonbeams but ten times brighter, dunking Colin and the Doctor into a deep-sea blue. And they stood and looked and were silent for a while and there was nothing but the occasional creak of the shifting, settling ice.

“So you can close the link by yourself now”, the Doctor remarked eventually, trying to make it sound casual. “Think you can open it as well?”   
When Colin looked at him, the Doctor’s eyes were still intently fixed on the ever-changing sky.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s try, then.”

“I don’t want to. Not now.”

The Doctor faced him.

“If that’s alright”, Colin added.

The Doctor said nothing, he just stood there and gazed at Colin with an inexplicable expression, and then slowly reached into the insides of his jacket, taking Colin’s hand a moment later and placing something small and warm in it. When Colin looked, it was a key, perfectly normal apart from the golden gleam it had about it – a key on a string. He looked back up and saw on the Doctor’s face, without any telepathy, a deeply honest, soft smile, more in his eyes than on his lips really, and in it there was hope and fear and a promise.

“Mi TARDIS es su TARDIS”, he said quietly, the smile wandering to his mouth when he felt Colin closing his hand around the key. Colin burst out laughing.

“I can’t believe you just said that…”

“Neither can I really”, the Doctor replied with a low giggle, then went all serious again. “I can’t – it’s…it’s going to take me some time getting used to you being able to be both, really…human _and_ Time Lord. To understand it both. That you’ve seen it all and you’d still choose to stay; stay with me, you know? But I promise I’ll try my best.”

“Doctor, you sound like a fanfic.”

“A what?”

“Has travelled from the inception of the universe to its ending and still never heard of a fanfic”, Colin teased. “You’d perhaps write one about ‘The Signalman’, if that helps.”

The Doctor looked very confused for a moment, but then he picked up on what Colin meant.

“Oh, you mean it’s fiction about already existent fiction, written by fans?”

“Not _about_ , more like an extension of, but yeah, that’s pretty much it.” Colin smiled at the Doctor, who however remained very still and very earnest, his brow in a frown. “I meant it as a joke, Doctor, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend-“

“I could write a sequel to ‘The Signalman’, where he returns as… Or no, maybe…maybe a prequel would be more interesting… Yeah, that’d be _much_ more intriguing, really…although perhaps it would reveal too much…”

Colin couldn’t believe his ears. He wanted to laugh, but was still afraid of hurting the Doctor’s feelings, so he did his best to stifle it, which resulted in his eyes watering and his voice shaking when he plaintively said “Doctor!” and shook the man’s hand to get him back down to Earth – or rather, Woman Wept.

“Yes?!” the Doctor made, as if he’d just been woken from being unconsciously submerged in a moon crater lake. “I…I’m sorry.” There it was, the smile, back on his face. “The concept fascinates me. It’s so intrinsically human…creating different timelines and universes, defying the inability to actually time-travel…” He paused and gazed into the dark vast distance of space. “Isn’t that much more romantic than actual time travel?”

“So you care about romance, huh?”

“Now don’t toy with me and act like you hadn’t been in my head.” The Doctor let out a knowing chuckle, but didn’t allow for time for Colin to reply at all. “The really important question is: can you ice skate?”

“I mean I can hold myself upright…why?” Colin eyed the Doctor curiously.

“Let me rephrase: do you _like_ to ice skate?”

“I wish I were better and the rinks are always too full, but…I love it, actually.”

“Wait here. Two minutes. I hope. Just…wait.”

And he stepped out from underneath the wave and hurtled away.

Colin sat down on the icy ground, for some reason still not feeling truly cold, and gazed up into the incredible sky. There were things, celestial bodies, directly above him the likeness of which he otherwise only knew from images taken by the NASA Hubble telescope. He felt strangely but utterly secure here, on this wrong, still planet. He remembered that he wanted to ask the Doctor if it had ever been populated.

He leaned back against the side of the wave and lost himself in the uncountable colours and ever-changing formations above. There was a planet with multiple asteroid belts around it, and the large moss-green gas giant from before with its bright moon, which seemed to have a smaller, reddish brother that now appeared on the gas giant’s horizon, and a little further up the rumps of several more luminaries were hidden in the blue-purplish extensions of the nebula, dotted with tiny, white stars, which seemed so close but must be entire solar systems of their own.

Colin did a jolt when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m back”, said the Doctor, smiley-faced and with two pairs of ice skates in hands. “Fancy a turn?”

“You had those just lying around in the TARDIS?!”

“You pick up a few things here and there, throughout the centuries.” The Doctor doubled up his longs legs and sat down beside Colin, holding out the skates in front of the boy.

“Your choice – ice hockey or figure skating?”

Colin noticed only now that the two pairs were designed differently, one with the characteristic little teeth at the front of the blade meant for acute, elegant braking manoeuvres, the other with even, crescent blades for fast, running steps.

“Ice hockey any day”, Colin chose. “Those toothy thingies have sent me spread-eagling on the ice without fail on the few occasions I tried them.”

“Fantastic!” grinned the Doctor. “More pirouettes for me then!” And he proceeded to unlace his black boots.

“But…how can they fit you or me either? You’ve got to have at least a size nine or something…”

“Just put them on!” the Doctor urged Colin without looking up from his feet. Colin had no other option. He slipped out of his boots and into the skating shoes, and as soon as his feet stuck in them fully, he could feel the shoes adjust to them, tightening in all the correct spots, until they felt like a second skin. Only then did Colin notice that they didn’t have any kind of lacing at all.

“What do you think?” the Doctor turned to him with an almost proud smile, already making to get on his feet.

“That’s amazing!” Colin’s face was all wonder. “Woah. What kind of alien tech is that?”

“Not alien. Human, 28th century. The technology was actually developed much earlier, but nobody thought to use it for ice skates. Pity if you ask me, because by then everyone had to – or will have to, sorry – travel to a different planet to ice skate. At least on actual lakes – and where’s the fun of skating on an indoor rink, seriously…”

“So you’re saying…there’s no more natural ice on planet Earth in the 28th century?” That piece of news was a bit of a dampener to Colin’s mood. The Doctor gave him a sad shake of the head.

“No. Not for a long time.” He sighed and drew his mouth into a thin straight line. “But you know where there’s lots of ice right now?” He grabbed Colin’s hand in an effort to help him get up. “Here!” And back was the smile, and it certainly wasn’t a mask – the Doctor just couldn’t help it. The frown wouldn’t keep. And as he let himself be pulled up by the Doctor, Colin looked into his icy, warm eyes and thought to himself in all honesty that right now, he couldn’t care less about the ice on Earth in seven centuries’ time. 

“Doctor?” Colin asked as soon as he was on his feet. “What you just said about the pirouettes…”

“Give me a break! Let me at least warm up a bit, will you!” The Doctor still seemed somewhat flattered behind his het up exclamation, and it made Colin all the more impatient. They skated hand in hand for a while, at first in the general direction of the beach, then around a couple of waves in a slow slalom.

“And you said you could only just hold yourself upright!” the Doctor remarked, amazed. “You’re brilliant!”

“Maybe I’m even better without you holding me back”, Colin teased.

“That hurt.” The Doctor withdrew his hand from Colin’s, but looking aside at him the boy could see him smile. Both their eyes were watering from the cold slipstream. It had been years since Colin had last skated, but he felt right at home. Much, much more at home than on the overcrowded, music-blasted rinks he used to go to with his parents, actually. There was nothing but lightness in his gliding here, so much in fact that for a moment, in the absence of the Doctor’s hand in his, he felt as though he might simply up and float away into space. He spread out his arms and sped away, face up towards the stars. He might as well have been right up there with them.

What brought him back was wondering if he could actually start floating on this planet. He wondered about the atmosphere – and that brought him back to the question of population.

“Doctor?”

He slowed down and came to a halt at the foot of a wave to turn and look around. No one there. Nothing but frozen sea as far as the eye could see.

“Doctor?!”

Silence. Colin tried to deny it, but he felt a lump forming in his throat. He had skated far, far away from the beach, so far he couldn’t see land anymore, and he was completely alone. Had he lost the Doctor? Had the Doctor lost him? He held his breath and heard nothing but the incessant, almost unnoticeable creaking of the ice and his own breath. He tried to hold it to hear more, but his heart was beating too fast, he needed air. Air. He was on a planet lightyears away from Earth, with a man he met yesterday, and now he was gone. Colin stood frozen like the sea, with a hand raised to his head, and the only thing moving were his fingers pressing into and scratching his scalp; it was something he always did when he was nervous or overwhelmed or needed to concentrate. After a while, he buried the other hand in his hair, too. But that was no good either, on the contrary it made it worse, reminding him of something he’d rather not be reminded of right now. His breath had become shallow and he felt as though none of it actually arrived in his lungs. Something in him was about to fuse when suddenly, he remembered a memory from the Doctor’s head – although it wasn’t the Doctor’s. It was Rose’s. And without knowing how, Colin realised that the Doctor had acquired it when he for his part had incurred the time vortex from Rose. The memory was of a moment when Rose had felt almost exactly like Colin was feeling right now – five billion years in the future, on her own first extra-terrestrial adventure with the Time Lord. Colin closed his eyes and could see the interior of the room; an observation deck with a wide window facing directly towards the burning planet Earth, beside Rose a tree cutting she’d been talking to, feeling slightly helpless, and in his ears rang the name of the plumber in talk with whom Rose had all of a sudden realised her current situation, quite similar to Colin’s in this moment. Raffalo. And while it made Colin feel strangely connected with both the Doctor and Rose, it also instilled a distinct sense of loss and disorientation in him. When was all that? Had it already happened? Was it yet to happen? Was there any linearity in time at all? Without the Doctor, he was completely and utterly helpless – here, and perhaps anywhere, anytime in the universe. He shivered.

Then he heard it – a cutting sound on the ice, soon becoming a singing whirr. And borne on it followed – the Doctor, practically flying, dancing on the ice, the shavings spraying away to the sides at every turn or brake, every notch in the circles he drew, seemingly regardless of the waves as obstacles, gliding forwards and backwards interchangeably, without a stumble, and the entire time, his eyes were closed. Colin was totally stunned by the sight. The Doctor’s movements were so fluid and graceful, he hardly seemed like a corporeal life form at all, more like a dark air current, a fast-moving storm cloud, a sentient tornado, leaving both destruction and beauty in its wake.

He came to stand precisely in front of Colin, although he had still not opened his eyes to look. When he finally did, they were red, and he was crying.

“Doctor, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just the wind.” The Doctor sniffled and rummaged for a handkerchief. Colin knew he wasn’t lying, but he also wasn’t speaking the whole truth. But something told him he shouldn’t ask; told him the Doctor only desisted from saying something because he himself didn’t quite know yet, or at least not how.

“Want to take it slower for a bit?” Colin asked, and the Doctor nodded, shoving the handkerchief – it was a fabric one in blue and white plaid – back into one of his deep pockets. “Come on then.” He grabbed the Doctor’s hand and slid ahead.

“What you just did…it was beautiful. Incredibly so, actually. How are you so good at this?” 

“The thing is…I’m not.” The Doctor stared into the distance as they turned the corner of a wave. “What you just saw…I can’t quite explain it but…that wasn’t really me.”

There it was again, that invisible barrier beyond a question not yet asked. And Colin avoided it.

“It doesn’t matter. It was still stunning.”

“Thanks, I guess.” The Doctor smiled, but he still looked confused. For some reason, Colin knew that the only option for now was to at least try and distract him.

“Was this planet ever populated?”

“Yes…it used to be. But all of its inhabitants went extinct in the Time War. Which, as things are now, was perhaps for the best…”

“Why is that?”

“Because now they’d all be dead no matter what. And they’d have died much slower, much more cruel deaths.”

Colin still didn’t understand.

“This planet was stolen. Removed from its original location and placed here. It used to be different; so very different from this. I only came here once before it was moved, but it was beautiful. Rotating so close to its native sun, a gentle sun however, it was warm and humid and teeming with life, like the equatorial regions on Earth but multiplied by…oh I don’t even know. Incredibly vibrant and alive and…no place for Time Lord, but so beautiful. However, if any creature here survived the Time War, it certainly didn’t survive this.” He motioned his head vaguely towards the vast expanse of ice.

“How do you steal a whole planet?” Colin asked. “Do you just…tow it away?”

“Possibly”, the Doctor mused. “Although there must have been different forces at work here.”

“Why?”

“Because the whole place, and with place I mean the entire Medusa Cascade, is out of synch with the rest of the universe by…” The Doctor produced his screwdriver and held it into the gentle airstream, “…exactly a second.”

“I don’t think I understand quite yet”, admitted Colin.

“Neither do I”, said the Doctor. “But whatever is to happen here…it’s not yet of our concern.” And with that, he pocketed the tool, squeezed Colin’s hand and silently skated beside him. For a long time, neither of them spoke a word. The longer they allowed their own silence, the more everything around them seemed to begin to sound; not only their skates on the ice and the sheer structure of the ice itself, but also the very air around them, the atmosphere, and the planets above. Colin was boggled, once again, and full of wonder. And suddenly, he felt that it was time, right now. Without a word or a warning, he linked his fingers a little more tightly with those of the Doctor and entered his mind. At first he was unsure whether it had worked, but only because they were thinking exactly the same thing:

“Can you hear it too?” 

And then, in unison, “yes.”

The Doctor halted, and Colin with him, and the Doctor looked at him and Colin knew that he knew, and it was alright, it was perfectly good.

“I’ve heard them all my life. It’s the first time anyone except me can hear them.”

“Not even the other Time Lords?”

“No. No one in the whole of the universe and beyond.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know. It can be terrifying.”

“It _is_ terrifying.” Colin stared at the Doctor staring at him. “Terrifying, but so beautiful.” A moment without thought, only feeling, tentative, but eventually inevitable. “Like you.”

The whole time, neither of them uttered a word, but now the Doctor’s hands were holding Colin’s face, and Colin had his palm on the Doctor’s cheek, his thumb just on the corner of his barely opened mouth.

“Your eyes are like Neptune opal”, murmured Colin, voice hardly audible, but indubitably there. For a moment there was absolutely nothing, then suddenly the Doctor was crying, his deep blue gaze shimmering until he blinked and the tears ran down his cheeks, silent but incessant. His reddened eyes made his irises seem an even more otherworldly, dark turquoise, shining from within like the cosmos shines with uncounted stars. This was it, the beautiful and terrifying, here in his raw, unshuttered glance; he was unfathomable and endless, and he was terrified, too, beyond words or conveyable thought; his mind was an undecipherable maelstrom, but Colin knew that the Doctor had not been this open, this vulnerable for centuries, and maybe not ever in his life, and everything was collapsing into itself inside him, imploding right now like a dying star, ready to pull all with it, into it, and either of them could have broken their mental link because just now it was nothing but screaming white noise streaming from the Doctor’s mind into Colin’s, and it was too much, but as little as Colin knew what was happening within the Doctor right now, as much did he know that they both clung on to a feeling at the centre of the collapse, a feeling too strong, too much to be worded or thought yet, to be anything other than a universal thunderstorm, and to let go now would have been to tear reality apart. 

There was just the song of planets for a time out of time, and them in the middle, holding one another, lost, but safe.

When Colin emerged from the Doctor’s eyes, he still had just a hand softly on the man’s face, the silvery traces of tears entwining their skins, the other on the Doctor’s leather-jacketed chest inside which his two hearts were now beating more peacefully again. The raging inside the Doctor’s mind had quieted down, and at some point, their thoughts drifted asunder although their bodies were still clinging on to each other. When the Doctor shut his lids, he locked a universe into them, and they reopened brighter, seeming less endless, and slowly, a calm, beautiful smile broke across his face.

“Hey”, Colin whispered, not quite sure why, it just felt right.

“Hiya”, replied the Doctor, tilting his head a little into Colin’s hand. “Fancy a detour?”

“I didn’t know we were heading anywhere in the first place – but a detour where to?”

“Neptune.” He gently removed his hands from the sides of Colin’s face. “Because you were wrong, you know?”

“About what?”

“Opals. There aren’t any on Neptune. But you know what there is? Diamonds! Diamond rain just above the core of the planet! Isn’t that fantastic?”

“That does sound worth a detour”, Colin agreed, blinking up at the Doctor, but not taking his eyes off those of the Time Lord. And he thought something to himself now that the Doctor couldn’t see it that made Neptune look pale.

His hand fell from the Doctor’s cheek as the latter pulled him close, hugging the living daylights out of him, and it felt truly warm and safe and wonderful, and if he was being honest with himself, Colin never wanted to leave. 

Hand in hand, they skated back to the beach where the TARDIS was parked. It was still standing where they had left it as though nothing had happened.

“Good old TARDIS”, mumbled the Doctor, “would you mind unlocking her?”

“Why me?”

“Because…I gave you my key.” The Doctor stared at the gravelly ground with a huge amount of concentration while pacing nervously on the spot. “The other one’s inside.”

Colin dug into his pocket, pulling out the key, and had to stop a second and drop his forehead against the front of the TARDIS with a secret, head-shaking smile before he unlocked the door.

Inside, they got rid of their skates and the Doctor was just about to slip back into his boots, which he had carried slung across his shoulder, when Colin halted his hand.

“Doctor…” he began, “…as you said earlier, I’m…I mean, I’m not entirely human, apparently, which is…oof, I mean, it’s quite a thing to actually know that for sure, but part of me still is, human I mean, and that part…” he chuckled, “…that part of me’s tired. Let’s just stay here for the night, mh?”

He peered hopefully at the Doctor, who slowly let go of his boots.

“And that includes me being out of my shoes, I s’pose?” he asked, trying to be serious but he couldn’t help grinning; Colin didn’t even know why.

“Doctor, why are you smiling like that?”

“Oh, let a man be gleeful, will you?!”

“No but seriously – have I done something-“

The Doctor’s grin momentarily turned into a softer smile.

“It’s just…I could _make_ you see, perhaps that would be easier, but…” He fiddled with the laces of his boots. “But I’m not sure you’d like what you see. Or if you’d even really see it at all, like I do.” He looked up from his boots. “Anyway, should I make us some tea?”

“Mind if you show me the kitchen and _I_ get to make tea?”

“Sure!” The Doctor sprang up as energetically as though they hadn’t spent their day walking and running away on and skating on an ice ocean, obviously relieved to escape the awkwardness of the situation.

In socks the both of them walked out of the TARDIS control room down one of the corridors until they got to one of many doors, except that this one was actually only an open doorway, through which there was a kitchen. It looked just about as spacy as the rest of the ship’s interior, but it was clearly a kitchen. As soon as they were in, the Doctor started rummaging through the shelves and cupboards.

“You hungry at all?” Colin asked.

“I…actually I’m fine, I think.”

Colin had his own head stuck in a low, dark cupboard, clinking with some pots until he had found what he was looking for. 

“You haven’t eaten anything all day, Doctor.” He emerged with a wide stainless steel pot in both hands.

“It’s…stress, I’m not hungry really – what…are you doing with that?”

“Just you wait. You wouldn’t happen to have a spice shelf?”

“Overhead, second from the right – bloody hell, I haven’t used that pot in centuries.”

Colin was already going through the cupboard the Doctor had pointed him to, while the latter had put a kettle of water on to boil.

“How do you take yours?”

“Oh if you don’t mind – and if you have any, that is – I’d prefer a fruit tea. Otherwise I’ll still be up at 3 am…”

The Doctor checked his watch.

“Actually, that’s in ten minutes”, he replied with a cheeky grin, and added after a pause, in which Colin threw him a suspicious look, “UK time, right now. Time up here’s…different. If there is any. Where were we, right, fruit tea…” And he, too, went rummaging through his stocks. “Ah! Organic blueberry and vanilla! Or I’ve got a lavender one, helps you sleep – or at least that’s what it says on the bag: ‘sleeping tea’.” He let out a small, disappointed sigh.

“I’ll take the blueberry one to drink, but I need the lavender too, in my hand, not in a cup, please. It doesn’t work for you anyway, does it?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Nope.” He handed Colin the bag without question. “Takes something much stronger than some nice purple herb to knock me out these days…” He propped his arms on the counter, leaning heavily on them and staring at his own oddly comedic, distorted reflection in the polished brass tea kettle, hypnotised by how it managed to underline particularly those features he hated most about his face already. Colin meanwhile carried the pot to the sink and placed it inside, opening the faucet.

“How do you get water in here anyway?”

“Filter…tech…stuff… You don’t wanna know. Or maybe it’s me who doesn’t wanna know.” The kettle started whistling. The Doctor exited his mildly entranced state of self-loathing, took it off the flame and poured the boiling water into their mugs. “Oh bugger!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Didn’t _you_ want to make us tea?”

“Actually that was just an excuse so you’d take me here.” Colin had placed himself strategically between the Doctor and the sink and now grabbed hold of the kettle, which still had some hot water left in it. “You go ahead back to the control room, and take my mug, please. I’ll be right behind.”

“Alright. Don’t get lost though.” The Doctor picked up the mugs and left, but not without throwing a look back that forced Colin to weirdly drape himself along the counter.

Five minutes later, he emerged in the control room carrying the huge pot in front of him. He was still in his jacket, but now, despite the low outside temperature, he was sweating.

“What did you mean when you said ‘don’t get lost’?” he asked while placing the pot in front of the sofa.

“Oh, the TARDIS can be a bit moody, with her corridors and rooms, especially with new people, but you’re right, why would she do that with you, except for…never mind, what in all heavens is that pot for?”

“Make yourself comfy on that couch and take your socks off, please, Doctor.”

The Doctor gave Colin a very suspicious look and muttered “actually, it’s a driver’s seat”, but did as he was told anyway. He reached around his long, folded legs to pull off his socks and place them neatly over the edge of a step up to the console. Only now, Colin noticed that their odd pattern wasn’t just any old odd pattern but tiny bananas strewn across the otherwise navy-blue socks.

“Are those-“

“Don’t laugh”, mumbled the Doctor. “I think they’re brilliant.”

“So you like bananas.”

“Yes.” The Doctor sounded defiant in an almost childish way, but when Colin looked up at him there was a smile playing around the corners of his mouth and definitely in his eyes.

“Alright, banana man. Now enjoy your lavender sea salt footbath. As much as you run, those feet of yours definitely deserve some tonic.”

Colin pushed the cookpot closer to the sofa and positioned it directly underneath the Doctor’s feet so he had basically no other option but to put them in it.

“I’m-“ He wedged his heels into the cushioning of the couch slash seat. “Warm water isn’t my kind of-“

“Just put your bloody feet in, Doctor. It’s not warm.”

Colin plopped down on the sofa, snatched his mug from the Doctor’s grasp and placed it in his lap before reaching into his jacket’s large pocket and digging up a can of baked beans and two spoons.

The Doctor still held his knees clasped to his chest.

“Did you have those in there all along?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes of course Doctor, never leave the house without a can of beans, even when you’re- No, of course not. I found them in your own kitchen. And now put your feet down.”

At last, the Doctor gave in. He carefully submerged his slender feet in the translucently violet water, and once they were both in, Colin could see a shiver run up his body. A quiet, content noise escaped him.

“And? Cold enough for Time Lord standards?”

“This is perfect”, the Doctor admitted, averting his eyes slightly shamefacedly. “How did you figure- I mean…”

“Just inferred from myself, to be honest. I love a cold shower or footbath now and then. When I was small I went to the swimming baths with my grandma quite often, and there was this one tiny pool of freezing water that was actually just meant as a sort of Kneipp basin for your feet, but I used to get a kick from going in completely. That used to be my favourite part. Admittedly it was also always a little dare, just for myself.”

Clutching his mug with his knees, Colin proceeded to work at the can’s ring pull, leveraging it open with the hilt of a spoon.

“Now, I’d also love you to share these beans with me. You know the old saying.” Colin looked at the Doctor, who eyed back. “People who eat beans together stay together.” The can gave a crack and Colin pulled the lid off. Then he tried to hand the Doctor a spoon, but the latter had one hand tightly around his mug and the other stuck under his thigh.

“Colin, I…” He pulled his shoulders up, as though trying to hide from his companion next to him. “I can’t.”

“I know”, replied Colin. “But I think you can. It’s just proteins, Doctor. Even says so on the can, look: ‘Naturally rich in plant protein’.”

“And sugar”, mumbled the Doctor. “The sauce is almost like ketchup. And you wouldn’t eat that by the spoonful…”

Colin set the can aside and took a sip of his tea instead.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked once he had swallowed.

For a few seconds, the Doctor was silent, and Colin half expected him to not answer at all, or deny what Colin was implying.

“Ever since the war.” The Doctor’s voice was so faint, it was almost inaudible. “With Rose, it was a little less… _there_ , less present…but it’s always been there, and since she’s been gone it’s…” He fell silent.

“It comes back, I know.” Colin took another sip of tea. “At the worst of times, it always does.”

“You know…?”

“You didn’t see?” Colin was astonished. Had the Doctor’s mind been more open than his own there?

“Only fragments”, said the Doctor. “Maybe I chose not to look, because I saw myself. One of the ugliest bits of myself.”

“Or maybe I just kept that door very well guarded, unconsciously”, considered Colin. “However…yes, I know. I know very well.”

Colin stuck the mug back between his knees and dug the spoon into the can of baked beans.

“This is the first time”, the Doctor said quietly, “that I’ve admitted this to anyone.” His shoulders had relaxed, and now he lowered his head and chuckled dryly. “Funny, isn’t it? That a Time Lord would have the time for an eating disorder. How stupid is that…”

“I wondered about that”, said Colin. “But honestly, it totally makes sense.” He carefully nibbled a single bean off the edge of the spoon and chewed it before continuing: “It’s about body issues, sure…but it’s also about control, and the lack thereof. You know that very well. After I’d left school…I mean I’ve been struggling with my body my whole life, but that was when I lost control, and…well, it wasn’t good.”

“But I have control over so much…” The Doctor wiggled his feet in the water, causing a quiet ripple.

“Do you, really?” Colin cradled his mug. “Because to me, it seems more like you’re trying to save everyone in an adversary universe. Pretty much the opposite of control, if you ask me. And a lot of loss, and pain, and grief. No laws above your own…except those of time, and death itself.”

“But that _is_ control!”

“No. That is the responsibility of a god, without the capacities of a god. Running until someday you can’t.”

The Doctor was silent and seemed to observe his feet, unblinkingly.

“And I’m sorry”, Colin added very quietly, “about trying to get you to eat. I should know better. I know that that makes you want to even less. At least it’s like that for me. I won’t do it again. It’s just…when you want to help…I think you know that feeling. Helplessness.”

Barely noticeably, the Doctor nodded.

“You have a fridge, right?” Colin asked.

“This is a time- and space-travelling ship, why wouldn’t it have a _fridge_?!” The Doctor looked at Colin and even let out a quiet snort.

“Alright, good.” Colin picked up the can of beans from the couch and placed it somewhere on the side, out of sight.

“Can I try your tea?”

“But it’s black-“

“I’m so tired at this point nothing could possibly keep me from falling asleep.” Colin smiled a slightly drowsy smile up at the Doctor to prove his point. The latter handed him his mug.

“Can I try yours too?”

“Sure, but watch out, it’s quite kitschy.”

For a moment, they just had their noses in one another’s mugs, sipping quietly. Then they removed their noses from the mugs but remained silent.

“And?” the Doctor asked at long last.

“Looks better on you drinking it than it actually tastes.”

“Then it’s got to taste bloody awful.”

“It’s quite nice, in fact.” Colin chuckled while handing the Doctor his mug back and taking his own. “What about mine?”

The Doctor seemed quite lost for words for a bit. Then he mumbled:

“’s…sweet, I guess…” He added an immediate, demonstrative yawn, facing away from his young companion.

“I’m tired too”, said Colin, emptying his mug in one gulp. “It was a long day.”

“I could make your whole life one endless day if you wanted me too”, the Doctor muttered absent-mindedly.

“Right now I wouldn’t mind it being one long night, honestly.”

“Oh, there’s a planet for that, too”, the Doctor remarked. “Or at least for a night that lasts 24 Earth years. Maybe we’ll go there one day…or, you know, one night…” He trailed off while blinking heavy-lidded at the console.

“Alright, who’s gonna take the beans to the fridge?”

“I’ll do that alright”, agreed the Doctor, “just…” He stretched down to pick his socks back up, on which he then proceeded to dry his feet, and slid off the sofa.

“While you do, would you point me to the bathroom?”

“Sure, just follow me.”

The Doctor picked up the can of beans and went ahead, while Colin took the footbath pot. Directly at the entrance of the corridor leading to the kitchen, he pointed his head to the right.

“Bathroom’s here. There should be a spare toothbrush.”

“Lovely, thanks. See you in a bit, back here?”

The Doctor nodded and headed over to the kitchen. Once he had vanished through the doorway, Colin quickly went into the bathroom, emptied the pot in the bathtub and then followed the Doctor, but tiptoed past the kitchen and continued to the next – closed – door. Opening it, he found exactly what he was looking for: a bedroom. It seemed barely used, if at all; there were fresh sheets on the double bed, and several layers of old-looking, woollen blankets on top of the comforter, and literal heaps of pillows piled against the headboard. Both the bedframe and the bedside cabinet seemed such organic, integral parts of the TARDIS, appeared to even be of the same odd material, that it looked as though she had grown them. Slowly and with a mild sinking feeling, Colin walked to the cabinet with its little, bulbous lamp on top that, upon closer inspection, didn’t appear to have an on switch, and opened the top drawer. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. There was a rather large flick knife of an odd, alien-looking shape, an actual iPod of older generation, its display cracked and no earphones attached, a dog-eared copy of Aretha Franklin’s autobiography ‘Aretha – From These Roots’, and a plush bunny with a fabric rose sewn to its paws. It looked like something one would get as a prize at a fair. There was a little card attached to the stalk of the rose with a ribbon that read: “Told you so! x Rose”. Suddenly, Colin felt guilty, more so than when he was basically walking inside the Doctor’s mind, and he compressed the bunny back into the drawer and pushed it closed. He gathered as many blankets and pillows as he could carry from the bed and shuffled through the door, back to the control room. He went back once more, got even more pillows, blankets and the comforter, closed the door behind himself and returned to the console.

When the Doctor appeared in the doorway ten minutes later, Colin had built a rather impressive blanket fort between the console and the sofa. The Doctor saw it, stood there like rooted, his mouth slightly ajar, eyes big and round – and suddenly sparkly as the milky way. A wondrous, childlike grin spread across his entire face, and then he came running to Colin in three long steps and squeezed the life out of him without saying a word. For a while they just stood there, hugging and swaying slightly to all sides, and only after the Doctor let go of Colin, he said, Colin’s hands in his, wiggling them in excitement:

“Brilliant idea! I’d wondered what arrangements we could make for the night, but this is perfect! Better than anything I could ever have thought of! Colin Alderdale, you’re a genius!” The Doctor giggled, and Colin giggled along. “You know, I hardly ever sleep through the night…if at all…but I didn’t want to leave you alone on your first real night, considering you were a bit passed out yesterday. The TARDIS can make a few spooky noises that need some getting used to. Like this, I’m always around.” The Doctor pressed Colin’s hands once more before letting them go. “Brushed your teeth already?”

“Nope, too busy building my masterpiece. Back in a minute.”

“That better be three!” the Doctor teased while Colin made his way back to the bathroom.

Ten more minutes later, the lights in the control room were out, and both the Doctor and Colin were lying on a thick layer of pillows under a canopy of blankets of a multiplicity of materials and patterns, on their backs, hands folded on their stomachs.

“Having a vast universe above your head is amazing”, muttered Colin, “but sometimes I think you just need a blanket. It isn’t called comforter for no reason.”

The Doctor smiled and nodded impalpably.

Silence fell, and for a while they just heard the quiet, soothing, constant humming of the TARDIS. After some time, they both thought the other had nodded off already, but when they looked to check, their eyes met in the dark, catching only the faint light emitted by the console.

“Still awake?” the Doctor whispered. Colin nodded.

“Back home I have this weighted blanket. It’s sort of become a habit that I always fall asleep with it covering me. Makes me feel safe somehow.”

Silence again. They kept looking at each other for so long, Colin forgot that those were eyes and not stars he was slowly falling towards. His head was sagging away to the side, deeper into the pillow.

“Doctor”, he whispered, “would you mind, umm, like…putting your arm on me? Around me? Something like that, just for the…weight?”

Colin turned his face away from the Doctor despite the darkness. But the latter didn’t even hesitate; he just softly draped his arm across Colin’s torso, hand in a fist, and mumbled:

“Sleep well, Colin Alderdale.”


End file.
